"I don't imagine I'll get the opportunity to say this very often in my life." Ivan paused. "Gregor, you idiot."
Gregor's hazel eyes flickered in Ivan's direction and away again. He looked like he was considering a Get lost, Ivan, or a less polite equivalent, but he remained silent. Ivan would have gone anyway, except that he supposed the whole time-wasting hair-raising almost-got-Ivan-killed mess was at least in a small part Gregor's fault, and he ought to be gently discouraged from letting it happen again.
"I can't believe you really thought that Miles was gunning for your hot-seat," he said plaintively. In his opinion anyone who took active steps to get Gregor's job was crazy, but clearly there were lots of madmen about, witness the soon-to-be-late Count Vordrozda and the exceedingly late Count Vordarian. Miles had a few screws loose in other parts of his twisted little brain, but he was as sane as Ivan when it came to dodging the Imperial bullet.
Let alone that the warm body between Miles and the Imperium was Gregor, and Miles would never in a million years kill any of his family. Well, by some spectacular messy accident, yes. Deliberately, no. It was far more likely that some sorely-provoked relative would strangle the hyper little runt out of sheer exasperation. Okay, Miles had had his head up his ass the last couple of years, and Gregor was turning into a grumpy old stick since he'd been landed with running the Empire, but surely the two of them couldn't have fallen out that badly?
Gregor, staring out of the window as if he'd never seen the view from Vorhartung Castle in his life, had been glum and silent so long that Ivan had given up hope of an answer, but now at last he said, "Do you think I wanted to believe it? But I knew he was running an army. The best scenario I could think of was that he would take the mercenaries and disappear. I could have ordered ImpSec to hold off unless he came back here."
Ivan scoffed. "He would never abandon Barrayar."
"Yes," Gregor said, very quietly. "That, I did know." He kicked one heel against the window-seat. "I'm not a damned telepath, 'it was all a giant accident because he never got around to getting a strategy' didn't exactly spring to mind."
"He had a strategy. Get into the Academy, get ship duty, become a real admiral," Ivan said idly.
That got Gregor's full attention for a change. "He could just have asked," he said in a small voice. "It didn't need all—" He waved a hand, helplessly indicating the full-dress court of the Council of Counts, assorted treason charges and a compact but deadly mercenary fleet.
"No, I meant that when he screwed that up, he couldn't make another one. He only has one strategy for his life."
Gregor raised an eyebrow. "Don't we all?"
Which was a base slander; Ivan had at least three. He sighed. "Didn't you listen to Uncle Aral, ever? I did. You can bet Miles did."
"I wasdoubting his judgment. And impartiality. Miles is his son."
Ivan wondered why Gregor so evidently envied Miles his father. He'd always been fervently thankful that Miles and Gregor were ahead of him in the queue for Uncle Aral's terrifying attention, and if that was what fathers were like he'd stick with his mama, thanks.
"You're his lifeline," he felt compelled to point out. "Without you he's either Emperor or dead, and I'd put odds on which he'd rather."
Gregor looked, if possible, even more gloomy. Time to ease up on the poor sod. "I knew Miles would do something stupid when he failed the entrance exam. I just didn't realised how dramatic it would be. I should have ordered him in, but he would have kicked like hell."
"Remember some of the things he used to do when he was bored?" Ivan said. They both gave a reminiscent shudder.
"Right. That horrible trek through the mountains he dragged us on when he was about ten."
"You weren't the one who was almost drowned in the flash flood," Ivan retorted.
Gregor shrugged. "Do you remember there used to be these historic rose beds in the south garden? Up until Miles got there."
"He was four. He couldn't even walk."
"Exactly."
"Spelunking Extreme," Ivan said, with a flash of undesirably accurate memory.
"Ugh. Remember the old weapons cache?"
"In horrible clarity," Ivan said. "And to think I was wasting my time worrying that the little git was going to top himself. Huh. I should have known that he couldn't die without dragging me along with him."
"That reminds me, what did make you miss your ship on Beta?"
"Well, I didn't want to mention it in front of Uncle Aral, because it was getting court-martial enough without—but there was this girl at the spaceport—"
Gregor flipped out a hand. "All right, all right. I might have guessed that one."
He was sounding envious again, Ivan thought. Well, ImpSec would have kittens, sideways, if Gregor announced that he was off to pick up lovely galactic girls on Beta. Boy looked like he could do with getting laid, at that. They'd moved towards each other while they were busy abusing Miles, and from this distance Ivan could see Gregor wasn't just miserable but wound up with it, the muscles of his mouth tense.
"You know," Ivan said tentatively, "we should go and get drunk or something. The Academy's going to realise I'm back any minute and yank my leash—Henri's too—"
Both of Gregor's eyebrows went up this time. "So, you propose to spend your illicit freedom getting drunk on my wine?"
"You don't want to get drunk on anything I could afford to buy, do you?" Ivan said persuasively.
Gregor actually laughed. Well, sort of snorted. "Ivan, you are so Old Vor sometimes."
Ivan rolled his eyes. "Are you game or not?"
Gregor did expressionless. "I do have this bottle of maple mead that Miles gave me for my nineteenth birthday. It should have matured nicely by now. I knew it would come in handy some day—"
"Yeah, as a secret weapon—"
"—Henri and I will get the wine."
Ivan grinned, confident in his ability to avoid the Vorkosigan poison-beverage. "Well, what are we waiting for?"